Saturday, August 31, 2013

I think the title sums it up. [EDIT: Of course the rare time I say that, and I had a typo in the post title :facepalm: - But the point stands.] What a complete and utter piece of garbage Peter King is.

"By making this statement, Mr. King, the former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, puts himself at odds with House GOP leadership, who released a joint statement praising Mr. Obama's announcement. "Under the Constitution, the responsibility to declare war lies with Congress," they said. "We are glad the president is seeking authorization for any military action in Syria in response to serious, substantive questions being raised.""

In January 2007, Booz Allen Hamilton was hired to assist the trustees with "the strategy." On February 7, the trustees went into executive session (the substance of which is never covered in the minutes) to discuss "certain real estate…matters." Booz Allen appears to have finished its work by May, because the board held two "special meetings" the following month (June 6 and June 28), at which the strategy was unveiled and discussed. (At this time, First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris was told of it, and she and her colleagues expressed "initial enthusiasm." NYPL officials also met with Mayor Bloomberg in 2007.) At the first special meeting, Paul LeClerc, the NYPL's president from 1993 to July 2011, presented the "pillars" of the strategy. A crucial pillar entailed "transforming the Library's physical footprint"—bureaucratic language for the sale of NYPL real estate and the remaking of the 42nd Street library. But why would the NYPL want to sell its own real estate? Its leaders have insisted for two years that consolidation and efficiency were always the central ideas behind the CLP; the trustee minutes state in passing, and without elaboration, that the strategy was developed to address the library's "structural deficits." And so the NYPL decided, in the words of David Offensend, its powerful chief operating officer, on a plan of action that entailed the "monetizing of non-core assets." (The other pillars of the strategy included the strengthening of the NYPL's digital presence, "encouraging innovation" and "securing the Library's financial future.")

Friday, August 30, 2013

"Darth" is an pseudonymous Twitter user with a terrific sense of humor, a loyal and highly interactive following, and a special gift for fast, funny, topical, reference-heavy, and often bespoke Photos…

Two more polls have Public Advocate Bill de Blasio far ahead of his Democratic rivals less than two weeks before the primary--with former front-runner Christine Quinn now lagging in third. According to a new New York Times/Siena College poll out this morning, Mr. de Blasio is now head-and-shoulders above his rivals, with 32 percent of the vote. Former Comptroller Bill Thompson and Ms. Quinn appear to be fighting it out to for a slot in the expected run-off, with Mr. Thompson at 18 percent and Ms. Quinn at 17 percent.

Let's put the Bloomberg era behind us once and for all. No fourth term for Quinnberg.

It will not be easy for the club to put the Bronx site together. Sitting on the parcel under consideration is a parking garage for Yankee Stadium that is run by a troubled nonprofit, the Bronx Parking Development Company. In April, the company defaulted on a $237 million civic bond.The soccer club would have to strike a deal with the parking company that would compensate it for the garage and put it on more solid financial footing.

Why, it seems like just yesterday we were squandering tax dollars to build that utterly unnecessary and expensive parking garage. And now we'll tear it down. Prosperity! And the EDC is STILL pushing for unnecessary parking in their projects. This election can't happen soon enough.

I only made it through the first half - a 10:30 start on a school night is pretty brutal for us old timers. A heartbreaker of a loss at 52-51 in OT, and if I stayed up for that I'd be considering hari kari. Nevertheless - what a game. It looks like this is going to be a good season for the Scarlet Knights. Feeling good about our prospects this year.

In related news, Union Grounds on Smith Street (between Sackett and Degraw) is a good spot to catch a game.

"The NSA still isn't exactly sure about what Edward Snowden knows, but one former U.S. intelligence official told NBC News, "The damage, on a scale of 1 to 10, is a 12." Anonymous officials also said, according to a new report, that Snowden, while working as a system administrator at Booz Allen, "borrowed the identities of users with higher level security clearances to grab sensitive documents," and that the ongoing forensic investigation "has already identified several instances where Snowden borrowed someone else's user profile to access documents.""

"8 days after an attack they say they're certain came from Assad loyalists, the intelligence community says it doesn't know where all the CW are, doesn't know who controls it all, and has questions about whether rebels seized (or took) CW after they were moved into place by Syrian forces. With that in mind, I want to return to the stunning report from NBC last night that casually quotes General Salim Idris, head of the Free Syrian Army, claiming he has "sources" in Assad's inner circle."

There is a lot of fodder for discussion with elected officials and mass transit planners. Now if only we were governed by people who prioritized building things here, instead of blowing things up overseas. For the price of Iraq we could have built everything on this map plus interstate high speed rail with money left over for skittles and ponies.

"Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Demarest has imposed "a constructive trust for the benefit of the Othmer Endowment Fund" on all of Long Island College Hospital's (LICH's) real estate currently in control of SUNY Downstate. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, this type of trust is meant to transfer property to "the rightful owner." This could be the first step towards righting a terrible wrong -- the looting of a trust set up by a local wealthy couple to benefit LICH. In her ruling, Justice Demarest reminded SUNY that funds previously "borrowed" in 2000, 2006 and 2011 from the Othmer Endowment Fund at LICH must be restored by SUNY/ LICH."

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

With 13 days until the primary election, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio surges ahead of the Democratic pack for New York City mayor with 36 percent of likely voters, close to the 40 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is at 21 percent, with 20 percent for former City Comptroller William Thompson, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner has 8 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, with 6 percent for City Comptroller John Liu, 1 percent for former Council member Sal Albanese and 8 percent undecided.

Now, a year ago I couldn't tell you with certainty who would win the primary. But what was always obvious to people actually paying attention was the gross overstatement of Chris Quinn's support.

No time frame reported that I noticed, and nothing that blows my socks off, but I'm looking forward to some more park. And it beats the salt marsh they were originally proposing for the site. From the Brooklyn Eagle:

BBP honchos unveiled design drawings at a Community Board 2 meeting Monday night – revealing plans for an inviting piece of parkland where visitors will sit or stroll, with a vast lawn, generous helpings of shade trees and a big field of meadow flowers.Its most dramatic feature is a triangular wood-covered platform that lifts off from a corner of the pier at the water's edge like a barely tethered magic carpet. At its high point, the platform rises 17-and-a-half feet, offering a vantage point to take in killer views of the Lower Manhattan skyline.

If they had a solid case against Assad they would not be using such weaselly language. Later, we'll get to "mistakes were made". This is a fool's errand, and if Obama goes down this road it will be his undoing.

And yet violent crime continues to fall. Glorious Leader Mike Bloomberg and Generalissimo Ray Kelly had to torture the numbers to trump up any correlation at all. Stop and frisk is a fraudulent disgrace and an inexusable abuse, and that will be the legacy of Mike Bloomberg.

But that sort of misses the point that both crime and stop-and-frisk are declining simultaneously. And those who study police work can't find a provable link to stop-and-frisk as a crime reducer.

Joel Donaldson got himself arrested and unintentionally vindicated the more crotchety elements of our society when his attempt to flee police was foiled by his saggy pants. The 21-year-old allegedly p…

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Yeah, why bother? Quinn may not have much of a vision for the city or plans to improve the lot of the ever-expanding poor or the real middle class (not that $400,000-a-year-middle-class the Times aims at), "but neither has she made a long list of unrealistic promises," the Times says. She may be in the pocket of real estate interests, and may support Ray Kelly's scorched-earth policing policies, but what do we expect in a diminished city?According to the NY Times, the era of getting things done that benefit all New Yorkers is over. Because it's just too hard.

"To us, it looks as though [George W.] Bush, [Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld never left the White House. [...] It's basically the same policy, as if US leaders had learned nothing and forgotten nothing in the past decade. They want to topple foreign leaders they regard as adversaries,without even making the most basic calculations of the consequences. An intervention in Syria will only enlarge the area of instability in the Middle East and expand the scope of terrorist activity.I am at a complete loss to understand what the US thinks it is doing."

But many Hamptons-goers were wary of flagrant spending, out of either anxiety or decorum. So, Porsche and yacht sales slowed. High-rolling holders of black American Express cards tossed them around less frequently. And the practice in nightclubs of offering V.I.P. treatment to those willing to buy bottle service — entire bottles of alcohol, at a huge markup — fell out of favor, a development marked by the 2009 closing of the Southampton club that was known for it, Pink Elephant.Now local Porsche and yacht sales are climbing once again, and Pink Elephant reopened this summer in East Hampton offering Methuselah (six-liter) bottles of Dom Pérignon for $30,000. It is not just a novelty; the club's co-owner David Sarner said Pink Elephant had sold "a few" this season, and many more "trains" of smaller Dom Pérignon bottles for as much as $8,000. "It was a bit lean for a couple of years in the Hamptons," Mr. Sarner said in an interview, acknowledging that the term is relative. "There's this at least perception that we're doing a lot better than perhaps we were, so people are freer to spend money because they're being psychologically conditioned with the highs in the market."

33 years of relentless, one-sided class warfare has certain perks for the winners.

There are two audiences for our actions here: Assad and the neocon warmongers. The former is in a fight to the death. How do you punish someone who is seeking a victory at any cost? Lobbing a few bombs in his general direction won't do much unless he's hit by one of them. The warmongers want a fucking war, and sending over a few cruise missiles is like giving a starving man a couple of peanuts. McCain and Graham are looking for the full meal deal, and this ain't it.

I feel like I'm trapped in a Twilight Zone episode where we keep repeating the same awful mistakes and no one ever learns.

So, as managing editor of CNN.com, I want our readers to know this:All you are to us, and all you will ever be to us, are eyeballs. The
more eyeballs on our content, the more cash we can ask for. Period.
And if we're able to get more eyeballs, that means I've done my job,
which gets me congratulations from my bosses, which encourages me to
put up even more stupid bullshit on the homepage.

Monday, August 26, 2013

You can bet your life that the big money in this city, the REBNY and other moneyed interests are spending a small fortune to elect a Mayor friendly to their interests, be it Christine Quinn or Joe Lhota. They'll be pulling out all the stops to try to prevent a man of the people from running New York . . . and they'll be doing it furtively, in the dark, wrapped in corporate secrecy. Brad Lander wants you to know what they're up to.

Another good initiative from our local Councilmember. You'd be hard pressed to find a more effect representative in NYC.

The Cap'n has a list of 5 rail trails that ought to go back to rail. While I do appreciate a good walking/cycling trail, mass transit is the greater good when it comes to these pre-assembled rights-of-way.

I know most of you don't care about these types of subjects at all, but parking minimums make it illegal to build urban hellholes even in urban hellholes. You don't need to have giant skyscrapers to h…

If the revelations about the N.S.A. surveillance were broken by Time, CNN or The New York Times, executives there would already be building new shelves to hold all the Pulitzer Prizes and Peabodies they expected. Same with the 2010 WikiLeaks video of the Apache helicopter attack.

"If the revelations about the N.S.A. surveillance were broken by Time, CNN or The New York Times, executives there would already be building new shelves to hold all the Pulitzer Prizes and Peabodies they expected. Same with the 2010 WikiLeaks video of the Apache helicopter attack."

If Obama and everyone else want to start rebuilding credibility, they need to stop lying, and get rid of the more substantive liars like Clapper and Alexander. But they also need to square with the American people about what this dragnet is for. Congress has repeatedly rejected internet-based surveillance to protect Hollywood IP and to socialize the private cybersecurity risk of corporate owners of critical infrastructure. Even Congress doesn't approve the use of this technology for some applications.And until the government stops pretending this is exclusively about terrorism, and stops pretending that terrorism is an existential threat or even the country's greatest one, it will continue to lose credibility.

"If Obama and everyone else want to start rebuilding credibility, they need to stop lying, and get rid of the more substantive liars like Clapper and Alexander. But they also need to square with the American people about what this dragnet is for. Congress has repeatedly rejected internet-based surveillance to protect Hollywood IP and to socialize the private cybersecurity risk of corporate owners of critical infrastructure. Even Congress doesn't approve the use of this technology for some applications. And until the government stops pretending this is exclusively about terrorism, and stops pretending that terrorism is an existential threat or even the country's greatest one, it will continue to lose credibility."

To the surprise of no one, the foremost newspaper of the establishment the New York Times has endorsed the most establishment status quo candidate of any party in the race for mayor, Chris Quinn.

I enjoy reading the times but we should all stop kidding ourselves that it is anything approaching a "liberal" newspaper. It is the voice of a firmly entrenched, socially moderate establishment. Progressive on women's issues, gay rights, racism, religion . . .but hawkish on foreign policy and deferential to power.

Ben Marks of Collector's Weekly says, "Recently, in the course of building a new family for Figurines , staff writer Hunter Oatman-Stanford learned that the ceramic pieces coming out of Staffordshire …

The Department of Transportation Division of Bridges will fully close the Union Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal on three Saturdays - August 24th, August 31st andSeptember 7th, from 7:00am to 2:00pm. These closures are needed to repair the bridge deck grating. The adjacent bridge at Carroll Street as well as the 3rd Street and 9th Street Bridges are available as alternates.

Closings have commenced and residents just started moving into the condo units at Sackett Union, the hugely popular new development in Carroll Gardens. The 32 units, priced between $1,105,000 and $3,1…

Especially galling since Toobin's entire career was based on betraying the confidences placed in him when he was a court clerk. Modern access "journalists" like Toobin, David Gregory, Bob Woodward and Andrew Ross Sorkin, to name a few, don't in any sense serve to inform the public. They serve as mouthpieces to glorify and speak on behalf of the privileged millionaire class they socialize and identify with.

New Yorker staff writer and CNN legal pundit Jeffrey Toobin has not been shy about his distaste for the actions of NSA leaker/"grandiose narcissist" Edward Snowden, and that goes for Snowden's associa…

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Demarest found that the State University of New York Downstate (SUNY Downstate) violated a contractual obligation in the asset transfer of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) property and has ordered that LICH assets be transferred back to the hospital.

. . . .

Believing it her “legal and moral responsibility” to correct an “error”, Demarest, without petition from LICH or any of its supporters, vacated the 2011 order granting asset transfer to SUNY and ordered that Continuum Health Partners Inc (Continuum), the “sole member of LICH” and former operator, take possession of the physical assets of LICH.

If, for whatever reason, Continuum is not deemed qualified, Demarest requested that a caretaker or receiver be appointed to takeover the responsibilities of LICH’s hospital administrator.

It looks more and more like e're going to see the third party conservator route. It's a good thing we're going to have a new Mayor who actually gives a damn about this sort of thing in a few months.

But for most Republican legislators staring down the next few election cycles, the biggest threats still come from the right rather than the left or the middle. Extremism, in short, will be rewarded.

Most centrist pundits don't want this to be true. There is a cottage industry in pundit land to declare that Americans are basically centrists or center right, and that extremism on either side will be punished. Political parties are seen as polarizing influences and necessary evils at best, clouding the natural agreements that most Americans share about public policy.

But the reality of American politics is very different. There is a liberal America mostly concentrated on the coasts, highly educated populations, heavily minority populations, and in larger urban areas. There is a conservative America concentrated in whiter, more exurban and rural areas. There's frankly not that much in between. One of the reasons that the Affordable Care Act has such tepid support is that most Americans are either against it completely, or would prefer something stronger. Most Americans want to increase taxes on the wealthy; the minority who oppose that policy want to cut them. Most Americans favor significantly stricter gun controls; those who don't are adamant about relaxing them. There's very little constituent support on most policy issues for a centrist, Third Way approach.

America, then, is a polarized nation. But it's not equally polarized. It's clear to almost everyone that the Right has shifted dramatically farther to the right, while the left has only shifted leftward on a smattering of social issues such as gay rights, but mostly shifted rightward on issues like economics and civil liberties. The politics of Eisenhower and Nixon on economics and foreign policy would find themselves comfortably at home on the leftward side of the Democratic Party, while Ronald Reagan would be considered a RINO in today's Republican Party.

The respectable citizens of Cobble Hill were thrown into an absolute tizzy last week over Gothamist's report that a "not unattractive" husband and wife had installed a giant, transparent glass shower …

Late last night, a fire broke out at a scrap metal recycling facility in Jersey City. Firefighters have been on the scene at Sims Metal since after 11 p.m. and they are still trying to contain it. Smo…

Monday, August 19, 2013

Unbelievably I had never even seen one of these until I moved to Brooklyn back in 2004. My brother-in-law to be at the time had one and I was mesmerized. My dad would killed for one of these if he had known they existed. Never experience the disgusting chemical taste of lighter fluid again - this simple to is a miracle for charcoal grillers.

No need to buy charcoal lighter fluid (or "boy scout water" as they call it in my home state of Colorado) or self-starting charcoal briquets. Just put two crumpled sheets of newspaper in the bottom ch…

Matthew says: "Artist Mona Caron has painted Manifestation Station , a mural on a utility box in San Francisco. When viewed from a specific vantage point, the mural replaces the unsightly box with a u…

This is completely insane. Getting to the PAL Micchio Center from anywhere but Red Hook is like playing a game of Frogger. It's a nightmare. As if voter turnout wasn't low enough already:

For the past several years, Gowanus residents have cast their votes at Camp Friendship on Eighth Street in Park Slope, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, but 1,683 registered voters recently learned that they will have to schlep to the Joseph Miccio Community Center in Red Hook for the Democratic primary election on Sept. 10. The Board of Elections says it made the move because Camp Friendship was deemed “inaccessible” to people with handicaps following a recent federal ruling that all polling places must be Americans with Disabilities Act compliant, an election board spokeswoman said. But area voters say the new polls are less, not more accessible.

A blast from the past. I remember writing about this profligate degenerate back in 2007 or 2008. He of the $2MM bar mitzvah [EDIT: $10MM bat mitzvah! - my recollection was less outrageous than the reality], David H. Brooks is a shining avatar of our second gilded age.

The founder of a company that supplied body armor to the U.S. military was sentenced to 17 years in prison for his role in a $200 million fraud scheme, the Justice Department said.David H. Brooks was formerly chief executive of DHB Industries Inc., a Long Island-based company that also supplied armor to law enforcement agencies. He was convicted in Sept. 2010 on charges that he overstated the company's financial performance and misappropriated corporate funds for his own use.

Mike Bloomberg insists stop and frisk is responsible for declining crime rates. What about lead? Never mind that crime rates have declined nationwide, while stop and frisk is a local policy. Correlation does not equal causation.

Mike Bloomberg is an asshole, and his indefensible defense of stop and frisk is a disgrace. Amazing to watch the man unravel his own legacy in real time.

Rahm Emanuel is an asshole. One of my early heartbreaks as an Obama supporter was when he named Rahm chief of staff. That along with Summers and Geithner were the writing on the wall for the type of administration we were going to get.

He is the one who seemed to have the best command of the moment, of his narrative about how he wants to end "the tale of two cities," meaning those who are wealthy in New York and those who are not; how his City Hall "will serve all five boroughs."

THE HEADFIRST rush to spend billions while squandering existing
assets runs afoul of a basic German transit planning nostrum:
organization before electronics before concrete. That is to say,
though-running—which involves organizational reform and new
electronics—is cheaper than the sort of multibillion dollar "concrete"
projects that New York loves so much and should therefore be done
first.

As if Anthony Weiner's run for mayor wasn't reality-TV enough already, the New York Post reports that the candidate is being trailed by a former producer for the MTV show Made , a series that followed…

Rome 's new mayor, Ignazio Marino, is leading a crusade for walkability by eliminating noisy, out-of-control traffic surrounding the ancient monuments. Starting with the Via dei Fori Imperiali – a maj…

Christine Quinn's worst nightmare has become a reality. Mere days after she finally finished fighting off Anthony Weiner from her top spot in the polls, Bill de Blasio has come in and knocked her off …

Alex Pareene urges Democratic voters in New Jersey to cast their ballots against "an avatar of the wealthy elite, a camera-hog, and a political cipher" in today's special Senate primary: "Cory Booker …

In the category of Luddite rants against the Internet, nothing will ever top John R. MacArthur's famous exposition of his belief that this Internet fad is nothing more than a "gigantic Xerox machine."…